Smart Traffic Monitoring and Control Using Drone Swarms Technology in Urban Areas

Introduction

Over the years, the usage of drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles, has increased significantly. These days, their uses include monitoring assignments and inspections of locations that are challenging for humans to reach. Swarms of unmanned aircraft can be used to carry out these kinds of missions robustly and efficiently. It does, however, put additional requirements on the control and navigation systems used for the individual drones. One of the most significant uses of UAVs is the traffic monitoring system, as the world continues to shift towards intelligent transportation systems (Abbas et al., 2023). This has been noted by numerous researchers in the literature, and as of late, some nations have expressed interest in implementing it as a full-fledged system. Drone swarm formation control methods can be broadly classified into the following categories: virtual structures, behavior-based techniques, and leader-follower techniques. The leader-follower paradigm—in which one drone in the swarm has been designated as the one who leads and the remaining drones are followers—will be the main focus of this project. When every drone maintains its relative displacement, the formation maintains the desired configuration, this is an example of a well-performing formation control. The entire formation will move in unison if the leader maintains control over his or her movements (Al-Dosari & Fetais, 2023). The last few years have seen tremendous advancements in modern surveillance technology, which can help solve challenging and complex issues like RTAs. Drones, also known as UAVs, have obtained popularity recently in traffic control and monitoring for urban areas (Attaran, 2023; & Banafaa et al., 2024)

UAVs find extensive use in both private and military domains, security, survey, monitoring, surveillance, disaster management, and Environmental mapping are among the applications for UAVs. Its dynamic design, inexpensive upkeep, high mobility, quick response time, and ease of deployment are the reasons behind it (Butilă et al., 2022). One of the main causes of its success is the affordable, versatile, and easy deployment of UAVs. These are particularly helpful in overly repetitive situations, but UAVs are restricted in the areas they can operate due to limitations in energy and visual range (Deng et al., 2023). Such energy and coverage issues can be resolved by a multi-UAV network, which consists of multiple UAVs operating in parallel. Recognizing data in multiple ways also broadens the scope of perspectives. The enhanced fault tolerance and reliability of the multi-UAV network of things is one of its primary benefits (Giannaros et al., 2023). In our study, we suggest a traffic surveillance system that will monitor, track, and regulate speed limits, other infractions, and suspicious driving behavior on roads and highways using the power of UAVs and the recently developed 5G technology (Gohari et al., 2022; & Javed et al., 2024). The objective is to compile the research that has already been done and determine which tactics and solutions are best for controlling vehicles in both rural and urban areas in one location. Additionally, the work will offer importance to the upcoming issues faced by traffic management research. The ultimate goal of this work is to further advance our understanding of traffic control and provide insight for the creation of more potent plans for resolving issues that towns, as well as rural areas, face. Traffic management systems have a bright future ahead of them.

Drones used for traffic control come in a variety of configurations, each adapted to specific functions and operating situations. The following are the most frequent types of drones used for traffic management.